Blog of Ronnestam » technology

Why Are The Worlds Greatest Brands Stuck In Old Technology And What Should They Do About It?

ronnestam — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 16:54:47 +0000

The other day a friend of mine brought H&M’s global website to my attention again. Back in 2006 I was one of their consultants until I more or less lost the assignment due to the fact that I told them what the didn’t wanna hear – Your website sucks! Of course I was wrong and they were right. After all, they’ve been awarded time after time at major advertising shows (Thanks to among others to me and the team I worked with back then) so why wouldn’t they know what they are doing.

This is exactly where the problem start for most major brands – at ad awards like Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Clio and others where people with no understanding for how to build an online presence beyond Adobe Flash and cool animations take these monsters to new heights. Back in 2007 I was also a part of building these kind of platforms for major brands but behind closed doors I constantly tried to convince my clients that sticking to these worn out technologies was nothing but stupid.

Let’s take a look at couple of major players and have a quick look at their online presence.

The Online Nike Store

The online store belonging to the worlds leading sports brand. All built in Flash…in 2010

Nike has always been among the first brands to adapt to change. Back in 1999 when I took part in pitching them into Framfab they were even heading the pack.

At first glance it all looks great. The site design is inspired by blogging with that clear and present left hand menu hanging there. But once you start looking deeper it’s a mess. The entire store is built in flash which is just plain stupid. To Nike’s defense I’ll ad that they launched the store in this costume around 2005 when Flash was the hottest thing around. However that’s not the case…since 3 years back. Until a couple of month ago the first page on Nike.com was also dressed in Flash but now they’ve changed that.

Nike.com is filled with fantastic content that people would love to get their hands on. Take Nike+ as an example, a fantastic running community that would have been spread engaged people hundred times more if they’ve built an open platform that allowed the community to truly contribute. However, today the Nike+ site like most of the other sites is locked up deep down in custom made solutions that doesn’t make it easy for people to speed the brand.

The adidas digital presence

As you might know I was working with adidas for a full 8 years. During those years I Creative Directed and took part in launching 59 global digital advertising campaigns for the brand. I also took part in developing their global site and their intranet.

In 2006 we launched the adidas global campaign for the World Cup held in Germany. Around this time I started to raise the question about leaving the flash platform. All results pointed in the direction that Flash, that was and is a wonderful platform when it comes to creating cool rich media sites, didn’t meet any of the demands that the users had. People came looking for products, videos, TVC’s, exclusives and more – but they did not want was to load heavy content, use unique navigation, not being able to bookmark specific pages or share specific content with their friends.

I continued to work with adidas until 2008 but never managed to convince them to leave the flash platform. Instead they listened to another agency that managed to talk them into rebuilding their global website with flash as the main tool. In 2008 they launched the new adidas.com, the same site you’ll see today and it was already in 2008 a step backwards, today it’s more of an artifact that they instead should burn on a disc and give away to Wikimedia as an historic time stamp.

The Rolex Global Brand Site

The Rolex site. I full on Flash site that demands a state of the art computer and broadband connection

Oh god how I loved this full-screen flash site when it was launched in 2007. It was state of the art and even though I started to abandon working with flash sites at the time I still felt that this served Rolex purpose. Now 3 years later I’m on the contrary sure it serves no purpose at all.

The thing with these sites made entirely in flash is the fact that they don’t do anything that cannot be done in HTML and frankly they can’t do some of things you can in HTML 5. The most important thing though is that when you build things in flash you’ve gotta cater for the SEO/SEM manually by customizing the platform.

A Car Site – Volkswagen

Volkswagen has since 2007 been going with flash all over the place. It was a bad decision then and still is.

I just took Volkswagen as an example. Every car brand seems lost in flash and big ass animations when you visit the campaign sites. Kind of strange since all we want is tons of short videos and photos of the cars. After all, we’re supposed to make a decision to buy a 50000$ car based on this information…

The Global H&M Site

The global H&M site all built in flash back in 2006. It takes you 4 minutes on an ok connection to even reach the right information.

I don’t even know where to start. It’s just plain stupid. The H&M site uses flash but in a way so that it could all have been built on HTML4 technology. There’s simply no logical reason at all why this site should work like this. I took part in launching Viktor & Rolf in 2006, Kylie in 2007, Summer of Surf and more for H&M years ago. Back then we had discussions where I told H&M they should throw the entire platform out and get new technology in. That was of course not appreciated and as we ended up being forced into creating flash sites we decided to drop H&M as a client in 2008.

The Microsoft Web Site

These guys got their first page covered in an animated Silverlight banner even thought they announced the wouldn’t continue develop this platform. Say no more… (Updated, just before I was about to press the publish button they actually removed the Silverlight technology from the first page)

Microsoft are strange. They more or less have the same site they had back in 2001 or something. They’re stuck with Verdana and a monster of a site. I bet that somewhere in that big ass company there’s a manager responsible for the site saying things like “It’s just to much information, we just cannot change this site” I say 85% of it is shit. Throw the site away and start off fresh!

So, why does’nt worlds best brands get online communication right? There are of course lots of reasons but I want to share 5 thoughts on the subject.

Old management

This is of course the number one problem. The guys and girls that are running these brands have in most cases been brought up in their business life before the Internet existed. This means they’ve learned how the world of communication works without the now most important component – The Internet. Having these people lead your brand Is like hiring an architect that doesn’t know 3D or CAD. They simply don’t know better.

The Ad Award problem

So, most of the people who manage these brands most likely send their stuff to ad awards. And most ad awards juries in the world are filled with advertising people who don’t give a damn about results. They go for the four F. Flash, Fun, Friends and Finalists. This means Flash as in sound and cool animations that more or less looks like the TVC the jury people love to see. Fun as in games, crazy solutions and humor. Friends as in awarding agencies and foremost people they know from start. Finally finalists as in – if another award show awarded the contribution, something must be right.

Stuck in technology

Most major brands have invested in huge content management systems. Interwoven, Sharepoint, SDL, Polypoly and Episerver among others. These systems were built by consultants aiming to lock you in and they were built for old web thinking. Many editors and many pages. Now when suddenly you wanna change technology or change how your digital presence is built up, these brands have to change their strategy entirely. This turns IT managers and brand managers into people afraid of change since that would mean they threw 1 million Euro on something useless. Thinking like that is of course wrong since were living in uncertain times where you don’t have a clue what’s right or wrong in 3 years apart from the fact that you will probably be wrong. Sticking to open source products and constantly iterating your online presence is the solution.

Wrong consultants

Most web agencies and advertising agencies out there have staffed their companies with people who can do wonders with Flash and .Net based platforms. Then suddenly you’re supposed to have people on your team who can rock PHP, MySql, Ruby, Python, Cassandra, Java, Jquery and other technologies that most IT departments hate on top of that.

Brand managers not understanding technology

Some of you will think I’m plain stupid. A brand manager shouldn’t need to understand technology. But I have different opinion. Personally I’d always prioritize knowledge about technology over knowledge about brands since all brand will be built on technology in the future and the wrong decisions from a digital point of view will have a greater negative impact on the brand compared to non technical decisions. After all, the world is filled with consultants who really know traditional branding while the other breed is hard to find.

Last but not least – CEO’s that just doesnt get it.

I’ve written a long post about these dinosaurs before. Go read it ››

So, if you’re heading a brand or a company. Here are 7 things you should do asap to get your brand moving into the digital future.

1. Never let an advertising agency steer how you do digital communication

Always initiate projects with the digital communication aspects first. It’s not very hard for offline activities to support online when they’re planned. The other way around thought is practically impossible.

2. Leave Flash. Leave Silverlight.

From a user point of view (based on how people really use the Internet) the is nothing, absolutely nothing, that motives the use of these technologies.

3. Change platform from your propriety platform.

The sooner you move all your digital assets to open sourced and MySql based ones such as WordPress, Drupal or others, the better!

4. Make sure you socially integrate the spreading of your content on most major social platforms.

Start by checking up on Brian Solis and JESS3 Conversation Prism. Video, Sound, Events, Documents, Live Streaming, Podcast, Images, Social Networks, Intranets, Extranets, CRM. It’s all to be found there as I wrote about the other day.

5. Provide people with true values

Once people end up on your site they are there for the products. They don’t wanna play around with games and shit. Products and services, that’s what you sell. If they’ve found you, your advertising has done the job – start selling!

6. Search should steer everything you do

Face it. People Google everything so make sure your platform is built to lure the Google robots into bed.

7. Don’t fear loosing your job.

Only fear doing things that doesn’t do any good for your brand. That will most surely get you a new one of you have one of those dinosaur bosses!

Go change now!

Brand and Communication Predictions For 2010 by Johan Ronnestam

ronnestam — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:03:05 +0000

This last year, 2009 has been a blast in many ways. Almost every day I’ve received interesting news from friends, other bloggers and my RSS feeds. Even thought we’ve seen one of the most severe economical downturns this year it seems advertising, communication and technology has been the business to be in.

Brands seem to have learned from the history and brand spend has rather gone up than down for a lot of brands. We’ve also seen Twitter and Facebook continue to grown faster than anything else on the planet and social media and open technologies has prospered due to that fact. The iPhone has continued to grow and Android is picking up it’s pace. Google has released lots of new cool products even though the Wave didn’t really become the clean double over head a lot of us expected.

Most brands have been looking for one-offs and as I look back at the 2009 Cannes Lions winners it strikes me that I can’t really remember one single campaign that stood out and changed the world of advertising. We’re slowly moving away from bought space to earned space, this is most certainly the reason why my brain plays these tricks with me.

I’m not gonna spend more of this post summing up 2009. Other people, papers, bloggers and personalities has done a great job doing this already. Instead let’s move on to 2010.

Click for a larger image

Here are the Brand and communication predictions for 2010 by Johan Ronnestam

REAL

This is more of a change in how we live, consume, work, advertise and communicate. We will of course use all technology available to become more real but we will strive to make things more realistic, true and touchable. As technology, much thanks to notepads, the iPhone and other portable technologies, becomes a part of our everyday life we will in 2010 look for inspiration in the nature and in life.

Brands will think twice about making up false stories about their brands. Product developers cannot trust advertising to sell their products cause transparency will bring you down. When you launch products or services in 2010 you better provide a true and real value – only then will you prosper.

The more we learn to search and compare products online the less room for multiple copies. We will search for the true branch leader and we will find it. Globalization and ease of localization means we’ll choose the best service or product not the locally produced one.

Open Source Win More Ground

Swapping content management systems from proprietary to open source is becoming socially acceptable among IT professionals. And why wouldn’t it. It’s usually better, more cost effective and more up to date.

Creative Commons have extended their program with Science Commons and CC Learn. We’ve already seen sites like Facebook and New York Times being built upon open source code and databases. Still companies seem reluctant to switch to code being written by a community rather than a company. But when the White House switched to Drupal I think we saw the start of a tsunami.

In 2010 Open Source will prosper and hopefully ever after! Sharing is the way forward!

Cloud Computing Will Spread Like Thunder

Most of you probably already got a large part of your digital life in the cloud. Think about it. All those images you’ve put on Facebook or better yet Flickr. That’s the cloud.

Earlier this year we saw the city of Los Angeles switch to Google Apps. There’s probably tons of more examples that I don’t know of but this is definitely one of the first and largest government adoptions of Googles cloud based Microsoft Office competitor.

Evernote, my personal favorite cloud based notebook, reached 2 million users the other day. Another cloud based service that reached 2 million users earlier this year is Dropbox. I’ve been syncing my files with this little sweetie since 2008. Wired, Mashable, MacWorld and PC Mag have all shouted out loud for this wonderful tool. When they launched their iPhone app this summer they completed my home office.

Practically everyone I know working with digital communication uses cloud based tools like Google Apps, Evernote and Dropbox. Once the mainstream users understand that these tools solve every problem a home user and small company has with backup, sync and office we’ll see people moving into the cloud like skydivers free falling from 15000 feet.

Management Consultants Moving Forward Into The Digital Space

If you’re working within digital advertising or communication you might have heard the rumors. Management Consultants like McKinsey and Accenture have put together digital swat teams who’s primary task is to conquer the business from digital agencies like RGA, AKQA, LBI etc.

Clients all over the world have grown tired listening to traditional digital agencies (yep, they’ve become traditional now) who’s employees aren’t senior enough to consider what good the digital world can do for their business. On top of that I’d say that not even 1% of the worlds traditional advertising agencies knows what they’re talking about when the talk future communication but they still got the Marketing Directors by the balls.

This is where the grey suits sees an opportunity. These guys got the CEO’s and Board Members by the ball and that’s worth more than marketing directors and advertising men & women. Will they do a good job? Some might but lots of them still look at the digital world as a single business area. Internet transforms business not distribute them!

Left somewhere in the middle you’ll have the digital agencies of today. They’re not good enough on communication, they don’t understand business processes and the web is about to shift from front-end to back-end.

Web TV Strikes With Full Force

We’ve only seen the beginning of Internet TV. In 2009 most established networks truly made themselves available online and HULU impressed us all by growing faster than you can say disruption. Personally I was privileged to given the assignment to draw up the strategy and design one of Swedens major TV channels, Kanal 5, web TV presence.

As the year passed we slowly saw iPhone apps being approved that let us consume TV however we want whenever we want. In 2010 however we’ll see the next stage. That’s when the TV manufacturers, just like Samsung already has done, start placing network connections into their screens. Suddenly Internet TV will move into our living room again. In the wake of that we’ll see fantastic mashups and recommendation sites that allows us to actually consume internet TV together. Today it’s to much of an ego product. After all, if we have access to everything from everywhere, who get’s to decide what we should look at tonight?

The downside is obvious. People will spend more time again in the sofa. That leads to stupidity. Stupidity leads to lack of innovation. Lack of innovation leads nowhere.

The happy ones are of course the traditional advertisers since the will start filling those internet TV episodes with advertising. The only problem is they cannot get paid what they want yet so we’ll have to live with tons of more ad breaks.

Twitter Spreads Beyond Early Adopters

This wonderful social networking ‘tool’ is loved by more than 18 million people today. And yet we’re all early adopters. One of the main problem is if course who the hell do you explain such a stupid tool as Twitter to someone? They have to try for themselves. It strikes me that none of my childhood friends that I regularly meet still today have used Twitter. Heck, most of them haven’t even started using Facebook. (did I mention their in the finance business).

But just like Facebook this microblog network will spread beyond early adopters and it’s all about invitations. So far Twitter hasn’t bothered to much about making you invite people. Once the make it simple for us users to invite more people as our followers/friends we’ll see Twitter spread like wildfire. Dare I say 100 million people on Twitter once 2010 is over?

Back End Computing Is The New Front End

Business moving their business online calls for enterprise resource planning software integration. And since those guys from the management side of the internet will start telling brands what to do we can definitely expect more complex websites in terms of how they’re built and integrated into the heart of businesses.

In 2010 we’ll see more companies like SnapLogic solving this by providing middleware. We’ll see less digital agencies earning the trust to build these kind of sites. Building a brand presence in 2010 will be about connecting data not creating cool interfaces.

An Augmented World

Layar, Wikitude, Sekai Camera, Twittaround, Avatars augmented promotion toys, Google Goggles, Mini Print Ads and much more.

Many were the augmented initiatives that started to spread via mobile apps and online campaign sites. So far however we’ve only seen the start of it all. As more people start using these technologies we’ll see widespread uses of augmented technology in 2010. It’s actually so obvious so I thought of not including it. Some of you might say it happened in 2009 but to me we’ve only seen the start of it all.

Apple Launch Their Tablet (iSlate?)

I’ve written about this before. But the amount of rumors circulating the web right now is quite enough to say that something must come soon. Not much more to say than if the rumors turn out to be true then I’ll change my media consumption pattern forever in 2010.

3D Printing Get Noticed By The Masses

During this last year I’ve done more than 50 speaking appearances. I often speak about democratization of technology, content and distribution. One part of that section usually is about 3D printing. You heard it right – 3D printing.

Stuff printed at Shapeways by gifted students The Royal High School of Edinburgh

3D printing is a technology that still is a little bit to expensive to be used at home but the awareness of it will surely spread in 2010. As more people become aware about this we’ll see more innovation. Say 2012. That’s when you’ll download Lego from Pirate Bay.

Mobile Handset Explosion Based On Interests

Android is being spread into more handsets every week. Inside that Open Source platform sits the app store that allows you to basically build whatever apps you like. Cost of technology is falling fast. Platforms like Bugbase and Arduino shows technology is no longer exclusive to large multinational corporations.

In 2010 I think, and hope, that we’ll see the first mobile phone brands that focus on segments. Surf brands, sailing brands, wildlife and so on. The opportunities are fantastic for any strong brand with a tribal-like fan base that would die to get their hands on a mobile hand set that positions themselves alongside their ‘star’.

In 2010 a brand, maybe Nike, will build a phone filled with sweet free apps based on the Android platform.

We’ll Form Social Clusters

Some say Facebook might reach 1 billion users in 2010. What that means for digital branding and communication is hard to say. But one effect of us all moving online is overflow of social information. I love my friends online but when you get swarmed with too much content you start to think about clustering. I’ll keep my snowboarding friends in my snowboarding community. I’ll keep my close friends on Facebook. I’ll keep my social media/communication friends on Twitter. Like that we’ll suddenly see people creating social clusters and brands will have a VERY hard time penetrating those clusters.

Personal recommendations will be higher valued than ever and sadly we’ll also see protectionism much like the one already happening when the early social networkers seem pissed about the fact that other people find these tools.

In 2010 we’ll build walls around our social networks. The days of sharing outside our true followers/friends might be over. I sure hope not! But I’m not optimistic.

A New Global Car Brand Focused On Alternative Fuel

I know. This one might sound pretty stupid. But think again. It’s perfect timing for someone with money, ideas and a great industrial network to launch a brand focused solely on cars driven by alternative fuels. The traditional car brands have spent the last 70 years on perfecting fossil fuel driven cars. Their engines are state of the art and it would be practically impossible for you to compete with that industry…unless…all that competence suddenly isn’t worth jack shit.

Today if you’ve got the right connections you can shop all the technology you want on the market. That engine can be replaced with a huge battery. Wind tunnels are digital. You find 10 industrial designers worth the money on every car mechanic. And the world is craving for innovation. This could of course be done by Tata or any of the Chinese car manufacturers. But I think there’s tons of advantages to start ‘clean’. Please let us drive something new in 2010!

Swedens First Digital Election

And to put this post to an end. In Sweden we have our election coming up in 2010. Damn – the net will be swarmed with Barack Obama wannabees. And I’m not sure they will benefit from it. One tip to all you political parties – read my first prediction – STAY REAL!

Well. Then there’s really nothing left for me but to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR! See you in 2010!

Art, Technology and Nature Combined turns into a Future Innovation

ronnestam — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:29:55 +0000

Thomas Traxler has got his shit together. Powered by nothing but sunlight and some threads, Thomas Traxler‘s “The idea of a tree project” shows us how objects can grow during the course of a day. His project more or less mimics the way a tree grows and changes shape due to weather conditions. Amazing.

Thomas got exactly the characteristic you need in order to create future communication. The competence of combining art, technology and while caring for the nature into ideas that get noticed.

infosthetics pointed the laser on it!

Technology democratized creativity

ronnestam — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:57:18 +0000

The music industry have for many years kept musicians at an arms length mainly because the hard- and software has been to expensive for the everyday musician to buy. On top of that the record companies has owned distribution and marketing. This way they’ve made sure that they make the big bucks while the actual artists get screwed over and over again. Now thanks to affordable laptops with software that doesn’t cost anything compared to a traditional studio production has been democratized and the internet makes marketing easy. Today a 18 year old kid walks into a record company with a final version of his song. The power has shifted over to his side and as a result the music labels are left with their pants down.

Now it’s time for the movie industry to follow.

Good friend Caroline mailed me a link to a new surf movie that is in production on Hawaii at the moment. Being a surfer myself I was of course first stunned by Jamie O’Brien handling Pipeline as if it was nothing. However, the quality of the footage amazed me even more. My first thought was that this was a big ass Hollywood production but as I was browsing through the shots I learned that this was the brain works of the next generation studio Laforet Visuals.

Laforet Visuals is run by tech geek Vincent Laforet, recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Photography” by American Photo Magazine in 2005 and among other things awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002.

By using a combination of the RED One, the Canon 5DMKII and radio controlled helicopters the studio shows Hollywood quality doesn’t have anything to do with big ass budgets anymore. Of course Laforet Visuals have spent more than most every day photographers, but still, the price tag in the end shows that if you have an idea you can actually pull it through. Only 2-3 years ago a production like this would cost 1000 times the money.

The Canon Mark 5 with a Redrock cinema lens – Hollywood democratized

The final results are yet to see as Vincent hasn’t published a final version of the movie. But one thing is for sure. When I see this I know that the next business that will have young creatives challenging the establishment will be the movie business.

(by the way, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those RED One cameras)